The present invention relates to a system for distributing audio compositions, such as music.
The traditional technique for selecting music involves listening to the radio, remembering which artists and songs are most appealing to the listener and then purchasing a compact disc, tape, or album containing the desired music at a music store. Unfortunately, a compact disk frequently contains numerous songs that the listener does not like and it may be very difficult to locate a recording of a specific musical or other audio performance. Accordingly, the listener often obtains a compact disk with one, and possibly two, songs which are enjoyable. On the other hand, when a favorite artist releases a new compact disc, the listener may purchase the compact disc without listening to the songs but with the expectation that the music will be enjoyable. Unfortunately, the compact disk will occasionally be completely devoid of any enjoyable songs. After obtaining a compact disc that is no longer wanted, the user typically sells the compact disk on the secondary market at a substantial discount.
To increase sales and to partially alleviate the unknown quality of the songs included on a compact disk, Internet-based music retailers selling compact disks may provide samples of selected songs for previewing. This permits the potential customer to make a more informed decision regarding whether to purchase a particular compact disk by listening to at least some of the songs included on the compact disk prior to purchasing it. While this is an improvement, the samples of the songs may be misleading as to the nature of the complete song. In addition, samples may not be provided for many of the songs on a particular compact disk and often samples are not provided for any of the music included on a compact disk. Once the customer has purchased a compact disk, the customer may need to wait several days for it to arrive. If the purchaser does not like the compact disk after purchasing it, the purchaser may relegate the compact disk to a drawer or sell the disk on the secondary market at a substantial discount.
Other online retailers provide individual compressed digital audio music files for downloading and purchase by customers. While permitting the customer to download desirable songs, without purchasing the entire album, the purchaser is neither able to return the digital audio file for a refund of the purchase price nor able to lawfully transfer the digital audio file to others.
Peer-to-peer music sharing over the Internet is another method of acquiring music. With an audio “ripping” program, a user samples the “uncompressed” music on a compact disk and then compresses the resulting audio data to create a compressed audio file, such as a Motion Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer 3 file, commonly referred to as an MP3 file. The compressed file is typically stored on the hard drive of the user's computer. Upon signing onto the peer-to-peer music sharing service, the compressed audio files on all of the hard drives of all of the service's users are made available to all other users and a user may listen to different music by downloading songs available from other users. This provides a convenient technique for sampling different music that the listener may not have otherwise listened to. Unfortunately, the music downloaded through a peer-to-peer music service is often compressed at different sampling rates, resulting in music having uneven audio qualities. In addition, re-compressing the compressed audio at another sampling rate produces a lower quality recording than would been produced if the uncompressed audio had been sampled at the desired final sampling rate. Because the system is a peer-to-peer file transfer system, with the server merely providing the network address of the audio files, the actual quality of the compressed audio is unknown and frequently the compressed audio files do not include the entire song. The user may likewise be unable to locate a desired song because it is currently unavailable from other users. Further, the download speeds are limited by the data transfer rate of the network connection between users and it frequently takes substantial time to download the desired audio files. Moreover, peer-to-peer audio file servers may require suitable licenses to comply with the current United States copyright laws.
In United States Patent Application Publication, Pub. No.: US 2002/0152874 A1, incorporated herein by reference, the present inventors disclosed an audio ownership system comprising a server storing audio files and connected to transfer the stored audio files to remote users. When contacted by a user seeking to acquire an audio file, the server determines whether the service provider owns a copy of a compact disk or other medium on which the audio file is recorded. If the service provider has an ownership interest in the audio file by virtue of ownership of a corresponding compact disk or other medium, the copy of the compact disk or other medium is “locked out” against downloading by others and the audio file is downloaded by the user. However, downloading is not permitted if all of the copies of the compact disk or other medium owned by the service provider are locked out as a result of previous or concurrent downloading. While the system facilitates locating music that is desired by users, provides high quality audio downloads and compensates suppliers of audio content, it may be difficult to locate a compact disk or other media that includes a particular performance of interest to a user and maintaining an inventory of compact disks comprising a number of performances of the same music can be expensive.
Acquiring music by previewing songs on the radio or otherwise and then locating a source of a compact disk or a high quality music file containing the desired song is often a time consuming process that results in listener dissatisfaction. What is desired, therefore, is a convenient system enabling listeners to preview, select, and acquire desired, high quality audio.